Editha Ann Tutor was born May 12, 1917 in Franklin County, Mt. Vernon, TX by Dr. Fred Taylor, Winfield, Tx. The daughter of Anderson Gusta Tutor Mattie Murphy Williams Tutor. She had one older brother, AG Tutor who was born in 1916, assisted by the same doctor. The earliest memories Editha had was living in a house on stilts in Arkansas beside a river. Her Daddy used a boat to go fishing and her mother kept a big wash pot down by the river to wash clothes in. Editha remembered crossing a bridge to go to the neighbors house to play. It rained a lot and the river overflowed its banks. The county had dug large dredge ditches to let the water run off so the land could be worked. The ditches had steep, concrete sides and the children were warned not to play near them. Editha attended some kind of school while she lived there but cannot remember if it was a kindergarden or something like Vacation Bible School. They did not live there long but moved to different places all over Arkansas and Missouri. Anderson built a big box and put all of their clothes, kitchen things and personal possessions inside. They rode a train from where they were living in Arkansas or Missouri to the blacklands of Texas, near McKinney. The family moved into a two room farmhouse. The large, homemade box was used as an eating table. Mattie filled up mattress sized cotton sacks that she had made, with fresh grass and that was their bedding. When they moved, all she had to do was empty the sacks and store them inside the box. Wherever they were living, every spring she discasrded the old grass and filled the sacks with sweet smelling green grass. Anderson was a sharecropper who worked for other people and they had to move often to where the work was. Anderson only owned one piece of property in his life. It was hard on Editha to have to go to so many different schools, make new friends and then have to move again. She determined to her self that when she had a family that she would raise them in one community that they could call home. When Anderson finished one job, his employer would move him and his family in a wagon to the next job. They raised a lot of wheat and cotton in the black lands. Haystacks would be as tall as a house. Editha and AG were earning as much money per day as their daddy hoeing cotton when they were seven and eight years old. Another early memory is of her mother helping build a playhouse for AG, Editha and QT. Editha and AG were around four and five years old. QT was still a baby. Editha was three years older then him. The playhouse was under some trees in the yard. They each had a room and there were shelves to put their playthings on. When Editha was a toddler (she says she could walk) she remembered having a bad sore throat and not feeling well. Her daddy picked her up in his arms and walked a long ways to take her to the doctor. Another time, Editha climbed into the wagon her Daddy had just driven into the yard. Instead of climbing into the back of the wagon like she was supposed to have done, she climbed up on the wheel. The horses were startled, started up and she fell with the wheel running over her leg. Editha remembers lying on a pallet on the front porch for several days. In the early 1920’s when AG and Editha were real small, Anderson took his family to Mississippi where he had been born and raised. Editha doesn’t remember what her grandparents looked like. There were so many relatives around that she could not keep them separated as to who they were. She remembers that her grandfather, Joseph Tutor was bedfast from tb. She talked of the big old house, playing in the Sycamore Trees and with her cousins, Catherine and Ray. QT was born in Pontotoc County, MS Feb 24, 1924. Her maternal Grandmother Catherine Pendergraft Williams gave Editha one of the first presents that she had ever gotten. Editha was around nine years old and living at Mt. Vernon, attending Full Bluff Scholl. (OR was it Flora Bluff?) Catherine gave Editha a little doll for Christmas, about a foot long. And there was some small Bible story books with pretty pictures. One was a beautiful picture of a rainbow with the story of why God made rainbows. Editha remembers Catherine Williams as being a tall, big woman. She died at age fifty two of pneumonia. Editha was around 12 years old. She did not know her grandmother very well because her mother and grandmother were more or less estranged.Mattie left the kids with her mother one time when they moved back from the blacklands and were househunting. Then, when the family lived on Uncle Nath’s place, Editha often went to her Grandmothers for eggs and milk. Editha spoke of eating her grandmother’s biscuits and tomato soup made with fresh tomatoes. She thought it was the best food she had ever eaten. But she and her grandmother never got very close and Editha said it felt more like going to a neighbor’s house then a grandmothers.
Catherine’s youngest son, Ike was a teenager at that time and he visited his sister, Mattie and her family often. Editha and Ike stayed close all their lives. Uncle Bob, Ike’s brother lived nearby and he visited them while they lived on Uncle Nath’s place. His daughter, Valerie was two or three years younger then Editha and they played together. Uncle E, another brother also came to visit occasionally. They were all young married couples at that time. Editha did not know them very well because she had never been around her mother’s people before and her mother still did not get along with them when they lived nearby. At this time they lived on Uncle Nath’s place, her mother’s uncle and they helped take care of him. He watched the younger children while everyone else worked in the fields. QT would get bored with Uncle Nath and run off to find his family in the fields. Uncle Nath would come lookings for him and ask if Scoo-T had come down there? Mattie would tell him yes and then Uncle Nath would want to give Scoo-T a whipping for running off like that. The Williams had a problem with their eyesight in later years and Uncle Nath could only see enough to get around. His brother Bob, went blind before he died. He and Bob never married and lived together until Bob died. Uncle Nath was out walking one night when he fell into a ditch. He got sick and died while at E’s house. Mattie inherited a little money from Uncle Nath. He and his brother, Bob had owned two places, one at Full Bluff, neat Mt. Vernon and the other at Daffney. Mattie bought a sewing machine, a rocking chair and a Victrola record player. Anderson bought five head of mules. People came from miles around to listen to the Victrola. Uncle Ike came to visit often to play records on it. Grandmother Williams died of pneumonia a couple years after Uncle Nath died. She died on Christmas Day. Mattie had just had a miscarriage, was sick in bed and did not get to go to the funeral. Her mother owned an 80 acre farm but only willed her daughter one dollar. The Tutor family moved to the Jagger’s farm in the fall, then bought eighty acres of land at Macon. A few years ago, people were still calling it the Old Tutor Place. It was the only land that Anderson had ever owned but had bought at the very worst time. The year was 1930, the year aunt Verdis was born, and the depression had just begun. They did not make any crops that year because of the weather and there was no money to pay bills or to even buy groceries. Cotton went down to three or four cents but that was not their problem because they did not grow any cotton or corn. The winter was unusally severe and they lost the place because they could not pay for it. The kids went to the County Line School when they lived at Macon. It only went to the sixth grade and Editha was in the sixth grade. You had to go to Monticello if you wanted to go to a higher grade. There only five or six older kids and Editha was at the top of her class. She kept her work done and taught the younger kids while the teacher taught another class. They were living at Macon when AG got bit by a groundrattler out under the plum tree. It bit him on the big toe and would not let go. He was throwing a fit and kicking it over his head and still, it hung on! He hollered at QT to run home for help. Mattie poured coal oil over the snake and sent for the doctor. It took the doctor an hour and a half to get there and by that time, the toe had turned black. He was sick for about a week.> The Tutor family left the place that they lost at Macon and moved to Ebernezer, from there to Holly Springs and then to Lafayette, where Editha met and married Robert Ellison. Every year or two they moved, sometimes twice a year. Before Editha and QT started to school, their parents had moved even more often when they were living in Arkansas and Missouri and then to several places in the McKinney and Plano areas. Edithas favorite relative was Aunt Florence Hellums, her Daddy’s sister. She was the only relative that Editha knew on her Daddy’s side of the family. Aunt Florence Hellums had married her first cousin, Laury Hellums who was Anderson’s best friend. She did not get to know the others until well after she was grown. Editha also liked Aunt Lorene, Uncle Ike’s wife and Aunt Annie, Uncle E’s wife. The Tutor children did not have regular toys to play with. They used their imagination and made their own entertainment. Brown snuff bottles became their cars, trucks and trains. Some of the games they played were Drop The Handkerchief and Little White House on the Hill. Editha got her first doll when she was around six years old. It was as big as a real baby with a cloth body and china doll head. If you were lucky on Christmas, you had a stocking hung up on the fireplace mantel filled with an apple, an orange, a piece of candy and some nuts. Some poor children did not even get that. It was during the depression when people just did not have any money. People from the local churches sometimes brought a basket of fruit to these families. Anderson and Mattie seldom went to church. Anderson had been saved in a Baptist Church in Mississippi when he was twenty one years old and Mattie belonged to the Methodist Church. Editha was ten or twelve years old before she can remember her Daddy attending a church service. Back then, most of the people who went to church were like the land owners. Poor people like sharecroppers did not have the clothes to go to church. The black people were even worse off. Their children ran around naked until they were eight or ten years old. The blacks worked for white people who did not have any money, either. They just shared the food with them. The white families usually had eight or ten kids to pass their clothes down to and did not have any clothes to share with the black workers. When you passed a house where a black family lived, there would be a yard full of naked children running around, sometimes with a few rags on. They stayed at the house while their parents worked in the fields. Editha was eighteen years old when she had a spiritual born again experience at home, under a tree. From then on, her faith was very real and an important part of her life. UnaAvery Watkins and Rosie Stevens(who married a Rogers) were two of Editha’s best friends at school. Editha was older then most of the other kids and was always at the top of the class. The kids looked up to her and she was friends with everyone. Her favorite teachers were two sisters that taught at Full Bluff School when she was around nine years old. She has a picture of them in one of her albums. Editha was good in all her school subjects. She had to make speeches in some of her classes. She read hundred of books. One time she read over ninety books and got points for reading so many. Every where that Editha attended school, the teacher would have her help teach the younger kids. Editha yearned to graduate but her mother did not seem concerned with her daughter getting an education. She made it hard for Editha to attend school. Editha had to help out at home and would be forced to miss school about half the time so she finally quit in about the seventh grade. After Editha turned eighteen, she had a desire to get a job. There were a lot of opportunities in town. Nell Ginnis was working in a laundry and wanted Editha to go back witb her and get a job. But Anderson would not allow it. The older people thought that a girl’s place was at home. If a girl worked at a regular job outside the home, she got a bad name as being fast. Editha worked in the fields and also did nearly all the chores at home. Her mother would put a dishpan on a bench and pile the dishes all along the sides. It was Editha’s place to take care of all the babies. If they were sick, it was Editha who stayed up with them all night. They looked up to her as if she were their own mother. Verdis started calling Editha Mother and it was hard to make her understand that she was her sister instead. Before she went to school in the mornings, Editha had to wash the dishes, milk two or three cows and help with the little ones. The family took a bath every Saturday night. Editha would put the kids in a big wash tub, scrub their rusty feet and wash their heads. She would cut their fingernails and get then ready for Sunday. No one had radios back then. It was around 1935 or 1936 before Editha ever saw or heard one. Buck Ponders at LaFayette had a radio and everyone went to his house on Saturday nights to listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Some of their favorite songs were, You Are My Sunshine, Red Wings, Billy Boy, Barbara Allen, Great Speckled Bird, Sleeping At The Foot of the Bed, Letter Edged in Black, Ole 97 (train), and Footprints In The Snow. They enjoyed songs by Roy Acuff, Little Jimmy Dickens, all of Ermest Tubb’s songs and the songs that were sung on The Grand Ole Opry. She remembered that she was also over eighteen years old before she saw her first movie. The clothes that were popular during that time were long waisted dresses, belts around the hips, gathered skirts, circular skirts and three tiered skirts. All the women wore dresses. It was a disgrace for a woman to be seen in a pair of pants. When women first started wearing pants they were very daring and a big deal was made over it. All the older people disapproved and used Bible scripture to back up their beliefs. Little boys wore overalls. Their best striped overalls were saved for Sunday and they wore their patched overalls to work in the fields. A person only changed clothes once a week. One reason for this was they usually only had two changes of clothes and another reason was that everyone had big families and their washing methods were very primitive. The mother would not have been able to handle the washing chore if everybody changed clothes every day. Ma Ellison, mother’s mother in law washed on Thursdays. It was bad luck for her to wash on Fridays. They used lye soap for washing clothes and the dishes. It would not lather up suds but cut grease very well. If you could afford it, P& G Soap bars were bought to wash your face and hair. You had to use a lot of it to make suds. The parents were real stingy with the P & G soap bars and were careful to make them last. Editha married Robert Ellison on Sept. 11, 1937. She was 20 years old and he was 25. They were married by Romy Fielden at his home. Romy’s wife and son and daughter, Curtis and Mildred were the witnesses. Editha wore a yellow print dress with a lace collar. When Robert died, Editha and her five children went to the florist to pick out the flowers for Daddy’s coffin. She picked out beautiful yellow flowers and told us the story about why she always wore yellow. Mother smiled at us, You kids thought that yellow was my favorite color but it was not. I wore yellow often for Robert because after we married he said that I looked so pretty in the yellow dress I was married in, he always wanted me to wear yellow and I did to please him. Their first home was on Miss Annie Harrison’s place. It had a tin top and only one room. Editha made curtains to separate the kitchen from the bedroom. They did not have to pay rent. Daddy told us kids that they moved into a barn, but mother indignantly explained that it was not a barn, but one of the buildings on Miss Annies property, more like a smoke house or something similar. She said they nailed cardboard boxes on the sides of the walls to make it warmer. Miss Annie was a widow and needed help around the place. She kept Robert busy doing chores and working in the garden. They lived there one year. All Editha and Robert’s younger brothers would come and stay with them. Then they moved to Oscar Reed’s place. Oscar furnished them a place to live and one mule. Robert worked the fields for half the crop. He just worked a year there on the halves. He already had a horse, Popcorn and the next year he got another horse, working on the thirds and fourths. Editha liked living on the Massey place the best. It was the next place that they moved to and had a nice, large house. Then they bought the house and sixty acres in the Latch community from Buford Kennimer and his Dad. Editha said that her favorite colors were red, yellow and blue. During her later years she loved a beautiful shade of peach.... She cared less for browns, grays and black. Spring and fall were her favorite seasons. She said that Spring reminded her of young people blooming and life being born. Summer is like the main part of life where you work hard and live life to its fullest. Fall reminded her of beautiful old people, their colors fading, preparing for winter. Her favorite foods were vegetables, fruits, soups and stews.. Editha enjoyed giving gifts that she had made herself. She made hundreds of quilts and gave them to shelters and homeless people. She said that working hard and keeping busy all her life had been the main enjoyment of her life. Nearly all the Tutors are extraordinary hard working people and are the happiest when they have a project to be working on. Editha taught Sunday School almost all her life and worked in the church. She loved teaching the little ones and they all grew up calling her MaMaw. The other grandparents in the church and community had to share their grandkids with her. She was MaMaw to them all. She was as much a sister to Roberts brothers and sisters as he was a brother to them. I grew up very close to my mother’s side, being the only daughter. Daddy worked out of town a lot and we had no vehicle. A lot of my memories are of walking to visit neighbors all over the community. We brought vegetables from the garden to people who had less then we had. Mother would visit the older bedfast neighbors who had no help. She would cook and clean for them, doing their washing while we were there. People in the community would give her the clothes they no longer needed because they knew she would get them to the people who needed the clothes the most. She was truly Latch community’s angel. I remember visiting FA Hellums in Lafayette Community when he was real sick living in an old abandoned house without electricity or running water. He was walking about a mile to a creek and bringing his water back to the house. He is another one who might not have lived if Mother had not gone there often to nurse and help him back to health. She died of cancer at my home on Oct. 8th. 1999. She stayed at home until she could no longer get out of bed. Then she called a nursing home and made arrangements to check herself into it. I found out and threw a fit. She was stubborn and insisted that she would need a lot of medical care and would not be a burdon on anyone. I had to tell her that she would break my heart if she went to that nursing home, that instead of a burden, I WANTED for her to be with me. So an ambulance brought her to my home on Friday. For the next few days, we had family get togethers at my home, everyone visiting with Mother and having their special time. Friends and family dropped by to say goodbye. Mother told them not to pray for her recovery because she was ready to go on. This earth was not her home anymore. And died that Tuesday night.